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Monday, November 17, 2008

What's with this G20 summit last weekend in Washington? Who are the G20? The MSM as usual abdicated their duty - did what they do best: what they cannot spin or obfuscate, they bury.

Initial research learns that the G20 have emerged from the the Doha Trade Round, set up on the basis of a Brazilian initiative in the run-up to the Cancun Conference. Apart of the states making up the G8, G20 member states include Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the EU and European Central Bank, and the NGOs IMF, the World Bank and their Development Committee.

With the notable exception of South Korea neither of these countries has a principled tradition of free market capitalism. All, until recently suffered, or are still bowing under the rule of theocrats, autocrats, dictators, a collective, or all of the above.

The Third World is slowly crawling on to the world stage, out of its largely self-imposed, poverty ridden, Marxism or theocracy driven lethargy. But swathes of Latin America are already in danger of regressing back into darkness, even before having fully emerged from it; Socialist as well as Islamic beginnings are simply antithetical to individual rights, the moral requirement for a fully functioning free-market democracy.

And then there's good, old chauvinist commie prop. The Heritage Foundation here reports on the PR stunt China pulled just ahead of the summit!

What can be expected of such a global, economic governing body? They cannot even be trusted to handle a trade round, let alone lead, run and reform the world's economic and financial system. How would they do that ... by committee, by revelation, or by decree?!

The situation is hardly better in the state of Europe, which is steadily desolving into a post-democratic, Hegelian Absolute. European states are challenging American leadership of the global economy, calling on President-Elect Obama to embrace Europe as America’s equal partner.

Soeren Kernon The Brussels Journal had this to say last week: "The idea behind this new man-to-man relationship with Washington was hatched by (surprise, surprise) France, which currently holds the EU’s six-month rotating presidency. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner says the reason for establishing an equal transatlantic partnership is that “the world has changed.”

Europe has suddenly realized that the United States “is not the only one concerned by the world’s problems. The European Union has become more resolute…. We don’t want to play a secondary role any more,” says Kouchner," who is an experienced NGO builder (founder Doctors Without Borders).

On the economy the French - as most Europeans - can be fully trusted to commit a coup of state against the private sector. Soeren Kern: "Self-regulation to solve all problems, it’s finished,” Sarkozy says. “Laissez-faire, it’s finished. The all-powerful market that is always right, it’s finished…. It is necessary then for the state to intervene.”

John Gizzi on Human Events goes as far as saying the G20 meeting was in effect Sarkozy's summit, clarifying "that the goal of the French President, was future international economic summits that include many more nations beside the traditional G8 industrial titans. His secondary goal was to assimilate discretionary bondholders (countries that hold U.S. debt) into the summits (...)

John Gizzi gives us the gist of what emerged from the summit: "(...) Sarkozy did get this long-stated desire of a "college of supervisors" for oversight of the books of major financial institutions operating across international borders. Moreover, the world leaders agreed that their systems would submit to periodic review by the International Monetary Fund (whose Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former French finance minister who was tapped for the IMF position by—you guessed it!—Nicolas Sarkozy).

A tougher line by ratings agencies on exhorbitant compensation for executives–either voluntary or regulatory—was called for in the final communiqué of the G20. Again, this was an issue doggedly pursued by Sarkozy.

With much of the actual work of the summit done behind closed doors, the media has had to rely on reports from anonymous sources on who said what to whom. Relying on such sources, the Washington Post pointed to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper as one who was particularly opposed to Sarkozy’s calls for greater global regulation over markets in sovereign nations.

We are looking at an entire round of talks stretching well into the next year. Apart from the above, nothing much emerged from present summit while outgoing President Bush acted as a forceful buffer against the anti capitalist onslaught. But as postmodern President-Elect Obama joins the company of Argentina, China and the other card-carrying members of the Grizzly 20 collective, we will soon all be reminded of which cloth that philosophy is a cut.